children
by matchboxcars
Summary: He felt surreal, he felt mystical, he felt as if there were no bottom and no top to his existence, mere walls and barriers and nothing to walk on.
1. Chapter 1

Spock awoke with fragments of time embedded into his memory. He was cold, he did not know where he was. His voice, again and again, was whispering, _where were the children?_ He fingered the sheet. His world felt sterile, he felt without, void, and he was beginning to grow restless but something compelled him to stay where he was.

A gruff voice entered the room, abrasive and yet kind. Dr. McCoy. Spock pressed his fingers to the stabbing pain in his head; the world was shattering at the vibrations of the doctor's mumbling.

"doctor?"

"ahh, you're awake"

"indeed. What has happened? Where is the captain?"

"He's fine, on the bridge. You, however, got pretty beat up, thank god for that green stuff in you, you would have been dead."

"what, exactly, was the mission?"

"You ask a lot of questions, Spock, get some rest, we'll talk later"

A hiss and then Spock fell, like a bird with broken wings into the blue of dreams, dreams where children surrounded him, mauled him, a horrible aching pain, _where were the children_. He felt as if he had been placed into a massacred version of Alice in Wonderland, he wanted, desperately, to wake.

When he did, the world was more in view, and he was warmer than he had been. Jim was there, and Spock could feel his concern edging in around his consciousness. What had happened?

Kirk was whispering his name. Whispers were like the screeching of hawks on the prowl, but better than the full and grating volume of a normal human voice. He felt surreal, he felt mystical, he felt as if there were no bottom and no top to his existence, mere walls and barriers and nothing to walk on.

Kirk whispered Spock's name. He watched his first officer come around, the dazed expression on his face, the eyebrows quirked, attempting to understand something, Kirk knew not what. Kirk shut his eyes against the memory of his first officer being attacked, mauled by tens of angry kids with dirty faces and raging eyes, calling Spock, the gentle, the kind and peaceful Spock a devil, a freak, anything they could think of as they pounded him. Spock had thrown the children off of him several times, he had made it look easy, but then, before Kirk could get there, one of them stabbed him, and then several others followed suit. A planet of children ignored by their parents, a planet of horrific children.

Spock had fallen back asleep, and as Kirk stood he leave, he was stopped by the moving of the Vulcan's lips. _Where were the children? _Kirk sighed, duty weighing heavily on his shoulders, the ebb and flow of Spock's breath the only consolation. He let the door slide shut after him.


	2. Chapter 2

They sent him back to his room, Dr. McCoy and Kirk each taking an arm, Spock not really knowing or caring, the setting was dizzy and framed in the past. They had cleared the halls. He had not anticipated the warm relief of his quarters, the softness of his bed and the cleanliness, nothing was out of place except himself. They helped him onto the bed, and he sunk under the covers and into the warm nest, exhausted. McCoy left, for that Spock was grateful, the man had the voice of a thunderstorm, it stabbed and sheared at the skin. Kirk was more gentle, he handled Spock as he would glass china, and although Spock's existence at the time felt peripheral, unreal, he was grateful to his captain, his friend.

The room was stuffy and hot. Kirk took off his uniform shirt and sat in the chair with only an undershirt on and his pants. Spock was nestled under the blankets, looking more relaxed than he had. McCoy wasn't really sure what was going on, he had called it a sort of repression, as if the attack had sent Spock into his mind, where the world was more like a movie playing out in front of him. It sounded to Kirk like a torturous apathy surrounded by magic realism. Slowly, he drifted off, waking hours later in a sweat, with the strangled cry of Spock resonating in his ears, a siren.

He shook himself off and made his way to the bed, where the tension had returned to his first officer's features. He laid a hand on Spock's arm, whispered his name, watched as relaxation returned. It was all very strange, he didn't know what to do, he was lost, he was without confidence, he was utterly alone in a place where he could not exhibit weakness. He went back to the couch. He did not move for some time, the red and orange of the room filling his head with pictures of himself, with ideas of failure and the importance of it all.

He could not open his eyes. Even as Kirk had laid a hand on his arm, and he was awake, he could not open his eyes. To do so would stop the unconscious repression, to do so would acknowledge the reality, the truth, his entire being. And he was floating in space, he was interim, he was everything that was safe when he was asleep. The children the children, the horrible ways of children. He wants to question time, he wants to question psychology, philosophy, he wants to question everything. He is tired, he is scared, he is restless. Everything is being centered, the emotions are being conquered, and still he does not know why. He is vaguely conscious of a friend, someone in the room, the touch that had left, but not really. It just wasn't physical anymore. He gathers his courage, the sight will be sharp, and he hasn't the slightest idea if he is ready, but he knows there is a friend in the room. He wants to see red. He wants to see.

He opens his eyes.


	3. Chapter 3

Kirk saw Spock watching him, and the space between them seemed thick and unsurpassable. Words seemed to float in their languid vibrations towards the prone man: Kirk felt, after saying Spock's name, that he was watching the letters swim their way towards Spock's pointed ears.

Spock appeared to deliberate with what to do with the sound. He struggled against shutting his eyes again, and Kirk thought the blink would go on forever, but the stones of Spock's eyes were once again visible; a curtain lifted and the horrors of war revealed.

Kirk did not move, he felt enveloped in the certainty of the chair, in the certainty of Spock lifting himself from the bed and speaking. Kirk felt, for the first time in ages, like waiting. He felt, for the first time in ages, as if the world had no preoccupations, as if he had nowhere to be, no one to impress, no show to put on, only Spock, only his truest friend, slowly lifting himself from the bed into a sitting position.

Their eyes locked, dialogue felt like the apocalypse to their perfect silence. Kirk let a breath of short air out of through his nose, and said, very quietly,

"Keats"

Spock gave a discreet smile,

"You will find any opportunity to quote his work, The Grecian Urn, I suppose? Not quite fitting Jim"

"I suppose you are right, Spock, how are you feeling?"

He expected Spock to resist, in his normal manner, saying with a hint of cynicism that he does not feel, that his body functions are damaged but functional, something along those lines. He had expected such an answer, was prepared to fight his first officer, his friend, until the man talked to him. Spock, however, simply sighed, seemed to retreat a little, although he did not move an inch. There was a silence, a taut rope, finally, he answered.

"Children"

And that was enough. Kirk knew, he knew the illogic of raging humanoid children attacking for mere physical appearance. He knew the illogic of raging humanoid children. He knew the illogic of children. But Spock was used to illogic, he had grown accustomed to it, albeit painfully, albeit unfairly. It was not that the attack went against Vulcan ideals, or anything to do with that.

"You felt their anger?"

"Do you know why he stabbed me Jim?"

"Because he thought you were the devil?"

Spock smirked, shook his head,

"No, no. He had telepathic abilities, we knew they were a rare possibility amongst his species. He stabbed me because he had an undisciplined mind, incapable of separating his emotions on youth from those of my own, before I could block him, he thought I had made his childhood twice as horrible, simply by touching him.

Spock looked down at his hands, looking suddenly very old, and very young.

"I should have been quicker."

Kirk shook his head, leaned back in his chair, a little slice of peace returning to the room, the soft glow of the chess set, the shine of the desk, the reds and oranges. Everything was imagery.

"No, Spock, you did your best. You have spent your entire life saying I should have. It is what it is, we learn. You forget that they hurt you as well. Children always do.

Spock looked at Kirk. A memory hung in the air, cascaded by light and friendship. It would take time.


End file.
